Jennifer Ray: performance artist




Hi. I'm Jennifer. I live in Louisville. I write. I paint. I make puppets.
I play in a band called The Crunchies. I subsist mainly on absinthe and candy.

Sometimes I have hallucinations but they're often subtle ones so I never
really know for sure. Sometimes I black out. Sometimes I faint. Sometimes
I have anxiety attacks. Sometimes I am compelled by forces beyond my
control to do strange things. Sometimes I have missing time. Sometime I
space out and go into like a deep trance. Sometimes I sleep with my eyes
open. Sometimes I dream when I'm not asleep. Sometimes I have prophetic
visions. My visions are never wrong, even when they're not right.

I know a thing or two about a thing or two. I have too much facts, and
facts tell me what I must do, even though I may regret it. I see the road
stretched out before me, the road I must take. The road I had a perfectly
good map for but it got wet from being in the back seat with the
anti-freeze, the busted ketchup packets, and the old McDonalds cups of
soda whose bottoms have softened and begun to leak.

Heavenly shades of night are falling, tis Twilight Time.




Among all my performance-art actions, "Operation Crunchy" is probably my most infamous piece. Taking the shape of a rock band called The Crunchies, we get ourselves booked in ordinary bars and venues, telling whatever tall tales necessary to get us in the door. That's right, Sir, we are a classic-rock cover band and we would be perfect to play in your frat-boy sports bar. Yes, ma'am, we're a bluegrass combo, steeped in the old-timey tradition. Fuckin-A, dude, we're a kick-ass old-school hardcore punk rock band. In fact, the noise of The Crunchies *is* punk, but not the kind of punk that would be the average stoner-skater-loser hipster's cup o'tea.

The noise of the band is more closely related to the traditional bands of retard-rock like Half Japanese, Retrovirus and Opportunistic Infection, or The Electric Eels. We take the exhibitionistic energy of Iggy, New York Dolls, KISS, etc. and reduce it to its basic dirt molecules. The reaction to Crunchies is always mixed and unforeseeable. It defies the preconceived perceptions and notions of the tired hipsters, which want only appropriate standard prepackaged noise, not of the "uncool" type. And The Crunchies are the most uncool band you will ever, ever see. We are the music of the losers and the freaks which are ready to exterminate all rational thought and to decapitate all despots.

People who claim to love "noise bands" have been seen literally running from the room at Crunchies gigs, incapable of withstanding the white-hot radioactivity of a band for which they have no frame of reference. The thoughtform energy of confusion produced by The Crunchies caused many personal transformations. We witnessed once-friendly people transformed into paranoid pathological morons, and many detractors and haters were allured by our siren song and were transformed into soft-hearted admirers.

The Crunchies question the validity of the concept of the rock band, the "counter-culture" in general. Why do people form bands? What do we gain by going to see them? What makes people prefer one band over another? Why the majority of the people seem to be into music for reasons having nothing to do with music? Why is the visual aspect so important for something supposed to be a strictly audio phenomena? Why people prefer live music to recordings? Is music really even important anymore?

Want a free Crunchies MP3 by email? Just Ask.







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